Global MPI 2018

The United Nations development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) developed a new version of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). The global MPI covers 105 countries in total, which are home to 77 per cent of the world’s population, or 5.7 billion people. Of this proportion, 23 per cent of people (1.3 billion) are identified as multidimensionally poor.

For the 2018 global MPI, five of the ten indicators have been revised jointly by OPHI and UNDP to align the MPI with the 2030 Agenda. This is in response to the Agenda’s call for a better measure of progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1 – “to end poverty in all its forms” – and to help achieve the principle of leaving no one behind.

Our analysis of 2018 global multidimensional poverty offer both a global headline and fine-grained analysis for children, rural areas, 1127 subnational regions across 88 countries, 640 districts in India, and other critical subgroups. The purpose is only in part to inform and at times alarm: more fundamentally, the purpose is to empower and incite action that ends acute poverty across many dimensions.

If you are interested and download in individual countries, we have Country Briefings for each of the 105 countries that make up the global MPI 2018.

If you are interested to have an overview of the global MPI 2018, then do watch this animating video:

Global MPI 2018 Report

The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index Report: The Most Detailed Picture to Date of the World’s Poorest People presents the global MPI 2018, a newly revised index based on a short but powerful list of 10 deprivations. During the launch of the Global MPI 2018, Achim Steinar further highlights that if development is about being more precise about directing the limited resources governments have and the indicators of the global MPI can aid that process. The revised global MPI is the joint work of OPHI and UNDP. The overarching aim of the revised MPI is to better align the global MPI with the SDGs (Alkire and Jahan 2018).

Chapter 1 provides a global overview of findings from the global MPI 2018. Chapter 2 focuses on India, presenting a case study on MPI from 2005/06 to 2015/16, with analyses of trends by age, state, caste, and religion, and a direct mapping of poverty at the district level in 2015/16. Turning first to the youngest on our planet, Chapter 3 assesses child poverty across all countries. Multidimensional poverty varies both within and across major geographic regions like Latin America or East Asia and the Pacific, and Chapter 4 presents some notable highlights. Going within countries, Chapter 5 scrutinizes poverty levels and composition across rural and urban areas. Finally, Chapter 6 zooms in to investigate circumstances within and across countries according to subnational regions.

The table presents an archive of all MPI estimations published since 2010. These are not harmonized for comparisons over time. Table 7 covers 361 estimations for 120 countries in 2018, of which 256 estimates are based on the original MPI and 105 estimates are based on the 2018 revised MPI. Download

Global MPI 2018: Key findings

This page highlights findings from the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and provides a range of resources. The global MPI, revised and updated in September 2018, now covers 105 countries in total, which are home to 77 per cent of the world’s population, or 5.7 billion people.

Global Highlights

1.3 billion people live in multidimensional poverty.

83% of all multidimensionally poor people in the world live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Two-thirds of all MPI poor people live in middle-income countries.

Half of the multidimensionally poor are children aged 0-17.

85% of MPI poor people live in rural areas.

46% of those who are multidimensionally poor live in severe poverty.

In 2015/16, more than 364 million people are still MPI poor in India.

In India, 271 million people moved out of poverty in ten years.

Regional Highlights

560 million MPI poor live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In South Sudan and Niger, more than 90% of the populations are multidimensionally poor.

In close to 70% of the subnational regions in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of the people are poor.

The largest contributor to poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is nutrition.

546 million people are multidimensionally poor in South Asia.

In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, one in four people lives in severe poverty.

17 of the 19 poorest subnational regions in South Asia were in Afghanistan.

In South Asia, nutrition deprivations alone contribute more than one-quarter to the overall MPI.

66 million people live in multidimensional poverty in Arab States.

Seventy% of MPI poor people in the Arab States live in Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia.

In Somalia, 82% of people were multidimensionally poor.

Education contribute relatively more to multidimensional poverty across the Arab region.

40 million people live in multidimensional poverty in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Over 20% of people are identified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty in Haiti, Guatemala, and Honduras.

In Haiti, more than 5% of the total population is poor and living in a household that has experienced the death of a child in the last five years.

118 million MPI poor live in East Asia and the Pacific.

The percentage of poor people in each country within the region ranges from 46% in Timor-Leste to less than 1% in Thailand.

The greatest contributor to poverty in East Asia and the Pacific is nutrition accounting for 26% of the overall MPI.

Europe and Central Asia is home to some 3.5 million MPI poor.

9 million of the population is vulnerable to multidimensional poverty

The poorest country in the region is the low-income country of Tajikistan where some 12% of its population is multidimensionally poor.

Across the 640 districts in India, the poorest district is Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh, where 76.5% of people are MPI poor.

Within India, 40.4 million people live in districts where more than 60% of people are MPI poor.

8 million Indians live in the poorest districts in the state of Bihar.

Subgroup Highlights

One out of every three children are multidimensionally poor.

South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are home to 85% of poor children.

In 35 countries located in Sub-Saharan Africa, at least half of all children are MPI poor.

More than half of the MPI poor children (53%) live in the weakest fragile states.

Fully 38%of poor children live in low-income countries.

In India, two in five children under 10 years of age are MPI poor.

The poorest groups in India – Muslims and Scheduled Tribes – reduced poverty the most over the ten years from 2005/06 to 2015/16.

In Niger, a staggering 97% of the rural population is MPI poor, while 58% of the urban population are MPI poor.

Burkina Faso accounted for the greatest difference between the rural MPI (0.604) and the urban MPI (0.218).

In Indonesia, subnational poverty is as low as 2% in the metropolitan city of Jakarta, but as high as 45% in the eastern province of Papua.

Uganda’s MPI is much less than that of the poorest countries like Chad and Niger, but the region of Karamoja in Uganda is poorer than either of these countries where 96% of its population is identified as multidimensionally poor.